Main Directorate of Camps (GULAG), as a system of detention facilities existed in the Soviet Union, was a multi-faceted phenomenon. This was expressed most clearly in the regulatory procedure and conditions of her sentence in the various categories of prisoners. Patterns of change in the regulatory framework prison system, as well as their relation to the characteristic of the convicts, was closely connected with the changing policies of the state of those years in respect of class-alien elements. Theoretical analysis.